Last X records you bought, 4th quarter 2003

Gang of Four, Entertainment! (w/ only 3/4 of Yellow appended to it-- whoops)
The Kinks, The Kinks
The Kinks, Kinda Kinks
The Kinks, The Kink Kontroversy
The Kinks, Face to Face (all Castle editions w/ extra tracks)

used CDs:

Cocteau Twins, Head Over Heels/Sunburst and Snowblind
Erase Errata, Other Animals
Essential Logic, Fanfare in the Garden
The Locust, Plague Soundscapes
Solex, Low Kick and Hard Bop
Throwing Muses, The Real Ramona

I JUST FOUND A COPY OF LA MONTE YOUNG'S WELL-TEMPERED PIANO ON CD IN SUPER MINT CONDITION AT MY LOCAL RECORD STORE.

all second hand

joseph jarman: song for

and i get on the train and its school home time cos i've skived off early and i'm surrounded by 13-14 year olds and i keep the cover in my bag as i slip the disc into the walkman and i feel like a kiddy fiddler. and the disc is a bit meh anyway.

i can't remember all of what i passed up. hvratski's swarm & dither, a genesisi p.orridge spoken word thing, a two disc ardkore comp (had cookin' up yer brain on it). fucknows.

= i am an idiot.

This is very good. The worst thing about it is that it end too soon.

Various Artists: Salsa Dura de Cali
Haris Alexiou: Ta Laika Tis Haroulas

The salsa compilation seems pretty good, but I will comment later. (I think "Cali de Rumba" sounds way better loud on a club sound system when I am warmed up than it does on my home CD player, at a moderate volume. And I don't think that makes it weak-ass music, to allude to an old thread I was just taking another look at.)

Now playing Haris Alexiou. I know this song! I think this CD is going to be great. This makes me want to cook garlicky food.

I also ordered the Beginner's Guide to Arabic Music just to see what it's like, since it's on sale at cduniverse.com for a pretty reasonable price (considering it's a 3-CD set).

I think Alexiou is way more instantly accessible than most of the Arab stuff I recommend, and she's quite good.

The Dastan Ensemble with Shahram Nazeri: Through Eternity
Psaratonis: Cretan Music
Marke b03 label compilation

I know nothing about the latter.

Tom Newman - Fine Old Tom (very very silly)
David Bedford - Instructions for Angels (fucking horrible)
LFO - Sheath (already in return pile, confused)
Blonde Redhead - Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons (I'm playing in a band with someone who sourced a loop from the song 'In Particular' which got caught in my head. Not sure about most of the rest of this album but this one song is very addictive)
Musique de la Grece Antique - Atrium Musicae de Madrid - Gregorio Paniagua
Jean-Francois Laporte - Mantra (Zambone Concrete)
Outkast - Aquemini
Dagmar Krause - Tank Battles
Zeek Sheck - Worcriers vs. The Care Company (wonderful, insane. especially track 3 & onward)

Iannis Xenakis - Oresteia
Bernard Parmegiani - La Creation Du Monde
Koji Asano - Spherical Moss Factory
Akiyama / Nakamura / Sugimoto / Wastell - Foldings
Toshimara Nakamura - No-Input Mixing Board (3)
Otomo Yoshihide - Ensemble Cathode
Albert Ayler - The Copenhagen Tapes

No more records this year now! Oh shit, the January sales...

I have a good part of it, but have never been able to find a copy of "Over the Edge".

the latter was my introduction to them back then. imo, they hit their peak on these albums. the opening songs to side A and B of BSD (the Seabirds & Wide Open Road, resp.) are glorious songs, and somehow paint a picture of how i imagine Australia (esp. the outback) to be (having never actually been there. yet). it's a shame that David McComb is no longer on this world.

1. Neil Young - "Decade"
2. Bubba Sparxxx - "Deliverance"
3. R.E.M. - "In Time: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003"
4. The Roots - "Phrenology"
5. Drive-By Truckers - "Decoration Day"
6. Self - "Breakfast With Girls"
7. Jet - "Get Born"
8. The Rolling Stones - "Black And Blue"
9. Erasure - "Hits! The Very Best Of Erasure"
10. Brooks & Dunn - "Red Dirt Road"

#1 and #6 were to replace the copies that were stolen from me when hooligans raided my apartment when I lived in San Antonio two years ago.

Ry Cooder and the other guy with the Spanish name: Mambo Sinuendo
Various Artists: Nu Afrobeat Experience

I haven't seen any mention of the second one, on ILM, but it seems pretty good at first listen. It came out last year, sort of another tribute to Fela, but not as overly as Red Hot + Riot. Overall this seems closer to the original Afrobeat sound (and the vocalists sound primarily African to me), though there is some borrowing from house, for example. (The houseified tracks work for me, but I'm not sure what people who are house fans would think.) Includes a Tony Allen track.

chas smith - aluminum overcast
bach - secret of the semitones - andrew lawrence-king, baroque harp
bubba sparxxx - deliverance
wanna buy a craprak?
pluramon - dreams top rock (impeccably simulated, but why? strong reservations)
deadbeat vs. stephen beaupre - it's a crackhaus thing ($3)
aelters - ardchilds' com.undo
yoshihide / takemura - turntables and computers
linda perhacs - parallelograms
mary margaret o'hara - apartment hunting
harold budd - la bella vista
bartok plays bartok - microkosmos
beethoven - diabelli variations - pollini

Marcel Khalife: Caress
Various: From the Libyan Folklor [sic]Music

Very interesting new instrumental album from Marcel Khalife. He's mixing jazz elements with Arab music, not an original idea I realize, but I like what he's doing here more than I like just about any other combination of Arab music with jazz that I've heard. I'm glad he is getting away from the big orchestral works which all sounded the same to me, and which I didn't like to begin with. The personnel includes his sons (I assume): Rami and Bachar Khalife, Peter Herbert (who typically plays with jazz musicians) on bass, and a cameo appearance by violinist Omar Guey (soloing). The first three or four tracks flow together quite nicely, but the fifth--what is this--this thing? I heard something very similar in a song on an older Khalife album. It's like an extended Chopinesque version of "Happy Birthday To You!" Unbelievably sacharine. I have no idea what he is trying to do here. Nothing else on the CD is like that one track, although I'm not crazy about his son Rami's piano playing in some cases. A little too influenced by Romantic era classical piano. (Both his sons are trained in European classical music.) Overall, I like it quite a bit. The use of vibraphones (played by Bachar) adds an unexpected color, which works extremely well with Arab rhythms. The second track has an odd disjunctive sort of rhythm that seems to borrow from free jazz. (It's not Arab, I'm sure, and it's not a straightahead jazz rhythm.) Also, the audio quality is very high. I hope this Khalife CD gets some press. (I hope the label is sending out review copies, and not just to "world music" magazines, but to other places where it might have a chance of being covered.)

I've only heard part of Disc 1 of the 3-CD set of folkloric music from Libya. I guess it's not too different from other Islamic mystical trance-oriented type stuff I have heard from North Africa, though I like it a little better than I usually like such recordings. The melody is very Arab sounding, to me, while the rhythms seem more African. I think this would be great live. The sound quality is not very good, but there is an echoey female announcer at the beginning of a couple tracks, and the lo-fi sound gives that a psychedelic sort of quality. (It's very brief though.)

Now all I've got to do is resist the urge to order anything else for another 13 hours and 16 minutes....

"Remasters" - Led Zep (£3)
"The singles" - The Bluetones (£2)
"Roxy Music" - Roxy Music (£2) - all WH Smiths on Boxing Day
"Asleep in the back" - Elbow
"The singles" - The Smiths - both £5 from MVC.

I'm pissed off as hell about "The singles" because quite frankly, it isn't. If I wanted to compile the versions of the singles on the original albums, I would have done it myself thank you and not paid Warners a fiver for the pleasure. No, I want the proper "Boy with the thorn in his side" thank you, and I suppose I'll have to go and get "The world won't listen" to get it. Sigh.